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First, then, let us examine those good qualities by which we
hold Likeness comes, and seek to establish what is this thing
which, as we possess it, in transcription, is virtue but as the
Supreme possesses it, is in the nature of an exemplar or
archetype and is not virtue.
We must first distinguish two modes of Likeness.
There is the likeness demanding an identical nature in the
objects which, further, must draw their likeness from a common
principle: and there is the case in which B resembles A, but A is
a Primal, not concerned about B and not said to resemble B. In
this second case, likeness is understood in a distinct sense: we
no longer look for identity of nature, but, on the contrary, for
divergence since the likeness has come about by the mode of
difference.
What, then, precisely is Virtue, collectively and in the
particular? The clearer method will be to begin with the
particular, for so the common element by which all the forms hold
the general name will readily appear.
The Civic Virtues, on which we have touched above, are a
principle or order and beauty in us as long as we remain passing
our life here: they ennoble us by setting bound and measure to
our desires and to our entire sensibility, and dispelling false
judgement- and this by sheer efficacy of the better, by the very
setting of the bounds, by the fact that the measured is lifted
outside of the sphere of the unmeasured and lawless.
And, further, these Civic Virtues- measured and ordered
themselves and acting as a principle of measure to the Soul which
is as Matter to their forming- are like to the measure reigning
in the over-world, and they carry a trace of that Highest Good in
the Supreme; for, while utter measurelessness is brute Matter and
wholly outside of Likeness, any participation in Ideal-Form
produces some corresponding degree of Likeness to the formless
Being There. And participation goes by nearness: the Soul nearer
than the body, therefore closer akin, participates more fully and
shows a godlike presence, almost cheating us into the delusion
that in the Soul we see God entire.
This is the way in which men of the Civic Virtues attain
Likeness.
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